The Revisionist Attitude Towards The Pacific Theater

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

Who says the PTO wasn't dramatic? I thought it had the most drama. In Europe we had a clash of steel and flesh, but in the Pacific the US and Japan were having a clash of ideologies. There were kamikaze pilots and suicidal civilians on one side, and the most individualistic nation in the world on the other. I'll never forget one documentary I saw where an American gunner was shooting down a kamikaze; he hit the plane and it started to fall, but instead of looking for a new target the gunner kept shooting at the plane as it fell, then kept shooting at the spot on the ocean where it landed... he just wouldn't stop shooting that thing, even long after it had stopped being threat. Meanwhile, the narrator was explaining the psychological impact that kamikaze pilots had on American crews.

Now contrast that with the nations of Europe, who are all so similar and all so used to fighting each other that opposing armies have been known to put down their guns on Christmas Day and play football.

Are you quite certain you're talking about WWII rather than WWI?

The war in Europe was an ideological war. The war in the Pacific was a resource war...